Atrophy
by Russet022
Summary: It was hard to keep fighting for something she didn't quite believe in. It was so much easier to just give in...


Disclaimer: I probably own nothing. Blizzard, however, owns a small chunk of my soul.

Atrophy

Amarthia lay on the hard bench, eyes closed, the bright sun that all of Silvermoon worshipped glaring down on her face. She had been lying there for days. No one had noticed. _That was the wonderful thing about her people_, she lazily thought; _they were all deeply invested in one thing only: their own personal survival_. But even that thought had occurred…_was it really_ (days) _ago_?

There was a lesson to be learned here, Thia knew it. For some reason, it was very hard to concentrate. It had been getting harder for days. Since she'd…she'd (sat down) on the bench, really. Things had happened, she knew, and the world had fallen into ruin._ Dark, ugly, sort of phosphorescent in a bad way, like the Ghostlands. Everyone blamed the arcanists. The long-ago ones, not the modern ones. Or was it the farstriders, the rangers, whatever, that they blamed for not protecting the Sunwell from the Scourge? Or was it…?_ Thia's mind trailed off, shying away from the idea. Her conscience wasn't really trying to suggest that she only had herself to blame. (Was it?)

She tilted her head slowly, allowing an errant, glossy curl to slide away from her face. Blinking, for just a moment, at the feel of it, she wondered if the platinum shine wasn't beginning to lose its luster. She couldn't quite bring herself to care.

Fleetingly, a green blur flew past, heading for the Shepherd's Gate. Then it paused, resolved itself into the vaguely familiar shape of a jungle cat. Her mind scrambled to find the words behind the blank spot in her memory. _Bright blue mane trailing down a striped green back, teeth _(tusks)_ gleaming in the sun... Troll druid_, Thia's mind belatedly supplied as the cat turned and ran back the way it had come. Minutes later, the skritch of its claws marked the cat's exit through the gate. Thia, head tipped back to bask again in the hot sunlight, let a soft sigh of a laugh slip through her slightly-green-tinted lips. She used to be like that, always running. She never let herself stop because…because…

The…the (need) had driven her to run, to fight. She'd offered her services to anyone that had needed help, just to stave off the hunger that could never be sated. She had fought everyone else's wars, _she'd aided in…in…she couldn't think of the word _(atrocities)_ the Horde had committed in the name of unity and advancement, followed her…her…former leader _(Sylvanas)_ down a plague-ridden road, and she could never…never…it was so hard to think…come _(home)._ Not the same as she used to be. So…_(different).

Thia lifted a hand lazily, splaying her fingers, twisting her wrist, watching the play of sunlight on (alabaster) skin, casting shadows across her face. She smiled. _Simple pleasure for a simple…_(mind). When her hand dropped, _far too…too _(heavy), it settled briefly on the soft furred mane of a tawny lynx. Then her hand slid into empty air. She didn't notice the lynx's worried growl, or feel its rough tongue rasp across her hand. _Poor kitty_ (Vairë), she thought. She wondered what the lynx was waiting for. _Not for…for_ (me), _surely not_, she thought. The cat she'd tamed had fallen into one of the blanks that had opened in her mind. Her memory was languishing with mind, body, _and that other thing_ (spirit). Memory, like cats, could not sate the craving lodged in her soul.

Vairë nudged her huntress's hand. The pale hand bumped into the bow that lay beside its owner. For a moment, fingers found their…(strength)… clutching at the smooth wood as if it were a lifeline. Then the hand went limp again. Memory stirred, but could not hold onto the words for very long. _After the hunger comes the lethargy. After the famine comes…comes…cold word, lonely word _(death). _But only after you…if you…give, no, gave, no…up_ (succumb).

A spell backfired out of one of the rooms in the spire above her. She jerked upright, clutching at the loose magic, _clutching at_ (straws), searching for herself. Eyes wide, unseeing, as the magic slipped through her fingers, desperate instinct driving her, she felt a momentary relief from the pain. Then her eyes closed again, in pleasure, and she lay back. Her head knocked against the hard bench. She saw spots, a memory, drawn down the shaft of an arrow, surfaced: the wretched creature some weak elf had become. And then she shivered in the sun, the magic beginning to run its course through her body.

_…More. She needed _(more). _But she wasn't that creature. She was…she was…she _(Amarthia) _knew the word. For sitting still on this bench for days on end, for the blanks in her mind, for the pain in her soul… The word…_

If Vairë had been in possession of a voice and her mistress's (formerly) extensive vocabulary, she would, of course, have known the word Thia was looking for. And she would have said, acerbically, with a hint of love and a hint of despair, _the word you want for this process _(change), _it's called _(atrophy).


End file.
